Filmmaker's 20 Most Read Posts of 2022

Well worth the end-of-year read! And not just because my interview, “We’re All Pornographers Now”: Juliet Bashore on Her 2K-Restored Kamikaze Hearts, was the top post of 2022. (Smart sex still sells.)

The Feedback: Arden Teresa Lewis' 'Leveling Lincoln'

At first glance, the story of the landmark 1961 desegregation case Taylor vs. Board of Education, which originated in New Rochelle, New York, might not seem like obvious material for a white, Los Angeles-based theater director-writer-actor to tackle for her feature doc debut. But then, Arden Teresa Lewis happens to be a native of New Rochelle — once dubbed the "Little Rock of the North” — and her childhood was shaped by a diverse community whose grassroots demand for change had led all the way to the US Supreme Court. And now with the help of film friends and family, including producer Kimberly Woods, another LA-based actress-turned-documentary producer; former New Rochelle students and parents (including Lewis’ own mom) who candidly share the ups and downs of being thrust into American history (not to mention the sharp gaze of giants like Justice Thurgood Marshall and journalist Mike Wallace); and the DocuClub LA audience that attended the virtual screening of Leveling Lincoln back in November 2021, the doc has reached another landmark stage: the US festival circuit. Which is why Documentary thought it the perfect time to check in with Lewis, fresh off final showings at the YoFi Fest in Yonkers, New York, to find out, among other things, how Leveling Lincoln has been playing from coast to coast (and in multiple locales in between).

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

High Art: All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

For Nan Goldin “survival was an art,” photography “a sublimation for sex,” and the art world “bullshit. Times Square was real life.” These are just some of the insights gleaned from Laura Poitras’s (Citizenfour, My Country, My Country) latest likely Oscar contender All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, a quietly poignant portrait of an almost accidental artist and reluctant activist; one who could never quite compartmentalize the personal and the political – to both the benefit of society and at heavy cost to her own mental health.

To read the rest visit Global Comment.

Battle royale: Non-Aligned & Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels

NAM / In a documentary diptych, Mila Turajlić examines the birth of the Non-Aligned Movement via an expansive unexplored archive of former Tito cameraman Stevan Labudović. The synopsis for Belgrade-born Mila Turajlić’s Non-Aligned & Ciné-Guerrillas: Scenes from the Labudović Reels straightforwardly portrays the award-winning filmmaker’s (2017’s The Other Side of Everything, 2010’s Cinema Komunisto) latest endeavour as a «documentary diptych of two feature-length films that take us on an archival road trip through the birth of the Third World project, based on unseen 35mm materials filmed by Stevan Labudović, the cameraman of Yugoslav President Tito.» But even that ambitious description doesn’t begin to capture the true breadth and scope of this multiyear journey back in time, one which led to the self-described «documentary filmmaker, archival artivist and spoken word performer» unearthing an anti-colonialist dream that very nearly came true; duly recorded on newsreels that were «a fake reflection of a true aspiration» (as Turajlić puts it in poetic voiceover). But instead, disintegrated into history, dissolving like celluloid. Like her country itself.

To read the rest visit Modern Times Review.

What to see at the 13th DOC NYC Festival

For cinephiles looking to avoid the Black Friday crowds, DOC NYC runs online through November 27! (And my recommendations made it all the way to Outtake magazine on the other side of the pond.)

The 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival Presents Wonder Women: Producers

Without a doubt one of the highlights of the 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival – and there were many, with this year’s red carpet attendees ranging from Kerry Condon, to Janelle Monáe, to Eddie Redmayne, to Lifetime Achievement Award in Directing recipient Ron Howard – was the Wonder Women: Producers panel, which took place at the light-filled Gutstein Gallery on a balmy October afternoon. Moderated as usual by industry vet Darrien Gipson, a specialist in diversity, equity and inclusion programming and the Executive Director of SAGindie, participants included English-Jamaican writer-actress-producer Nicôle Lecky (Mood, The Moor Girl), American actress and producer Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country, Birds of Prey), English film producer Alison Owen (Elizabeth, Saving Mr. Banks), manager and producer Laura Berwick (Belfast, All is True), and indie icon and Killer Films founder Christine Vachon (Far From Heaven, Carol). Which meant that, including Gipson, half the panel were women of colour – split equally between sides of the pond – and representing multiple generations. Not a common sight on festival panels, let alone on industry boardrooms. Yet.

To read the rest visit Outtake magazine.

Get out: Racist Trees

RACISM / A row of tamarisk trees along a huge golf course in Palm Springs begs the question, can a tree be racist? As a critic who’s long enjoyed covering the Palm Springs International Film Festival – and even served on its doc jury this year – Sara Newens and Mina T. Son’s brilliantly conceived Racist Trees was an IDFA must-watch for me, and a film that ultimately made me rethink that sunny California fest’s host city in an unexpected, simultaneously laugh-out-loud and horrific way. To say that Racist Trees – which takes a deep dive into the origin of a line of trees separating a massive golf course in Palm Springs from the historically Black neighbourhood of Crossley Tract (named after its founder, African-American entrepreneur Lawrence Crossley) – is not your average work of investigative journalism is a vast understatement. In fact, the doc hews much closer to the absurdist satire of Jordan Peele (whose work can be seen as its own form of public service, I suppose). The «villain», as the title alludes, is what would at first glance seem to be an innocuous shrub but, upon closer examination, is actually a terrifying invasive species. One which not only keeps rich whites from having to interact with (or even see – literally «there’s nothing to see here» for these folks) the poorer and darker community next door but is actually wreaking havoc on those residents (from serving as an enticing home for the area’s numerous snakes and rats, to actually combusting in the hot desert sun). And while the citizens of Crossley Tract have fought for decades to have these dangerous nuisances destroyed, the gaslighting, Hollywood expat crowd on the other side insists there’s no reason to remove these natural, aesthetically-pleasing plants. Oh, and by the way, neither they nor their harmless tamarisk trees are racist; they’ll have you know.

To read the rest visit Modern Times Review.

Wall talk: Silent House

IRAN / The fortunes of three generations of an upper-middle-class Iranian family tracked across forty years of turbulent Iranian history. Spanning a whopping four decades and (the camerawork of) three generations, Silent House packs a dramatic punch that belies its rather innocuous title. At the centre of the tale is one upper-middle-class family in Tehran that went from riches to, if not rags, being left with a once-grand, now Grey Gardens-esque, mansion formerly owned by the fourth wife of the Shah of Iran. (That would be Reza Shah, who ruled from 1925-1941.) And at the centre of the filmmaking – and also their own current real-life drama, having been banned from leaving Iran to attend the IDFA premiere – are a pair of siblings, sister and brother Farnaz Jurabchian and Mohammadreza Jurabchian, who happen to be the third generation taking up residence on one floor of this «silent house.»

To read the rest visit Modern Times Review.

“The Complexity of a Disorder”: Svetislav Dragomirovic on I’m People, I Am Nobody

Svetislav Dragomirovic’s debut feature I’m People, I Am Nobody is a film I wasn’t prepared to watch. From its coy DOC NYC synopsis, we learn it’s the story of a 60-year-old retired porn performer from Serbia named Stevan who’s found himself stuck, Kafka-style, in a Maltese jail, accused of indecent exposure. What we don’t learn from that brief description is that Stevan is actually Dragomirovic’s father-in-law, and that the filmmaker received a series of “audio-letters” that Stevan had sent from prison, which form the basis of I’m People, I Am Nobody, an experimental collage that takes us on a shocking journey through Stevan’s twisting (and often twisted) mind. To learn all about the project, including dealing with a family member suffering from one of society’s most taboo disorders, Filmmaker reached out to the Belgrade-born director-producer soon after the film’s November 16th DOC NYC premiere.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Consequences of Putin’s Playbook”: Marusya Syroechkovskaya on How to Save a Dead Friend

"Russia is for Russians!” goes the far-right rallying cry. To which Marusya replies, “Bullshit. Russia is for depressed people.” She should know: Moscow-born Marusya Syroechkovskaya spent a dozen years turning her camera (multiple cameras, really) on herself and her co-credited cameraperson and best friend (turned lover, turned husband, turned ex) Kimi Morev. The two met as suicidal teenagers in their nation’s capital in the aughts, both part of the spiraling “silenced generation” under Putin. They shocked one another by deciding to stick around for a spell to see how their - and perhaps their antiauthoritarian compatriots’s — story would end. (That said, the soulmates didn’t actually notice the 2000s come to a close. As the director laments, “It’s just like they morphed into a bad trip.”) Surprisingly for a film that takes an unflinching look at mental illness and addiction in the “depression Federation” — and is tellingly titled How to Save a Dead Friend — the tale is one of unbridled joie de vivre as much as it is about ultimate self-destruction. Indeed, the doc moves as swiftly and headily as its post-punk and grunge-heavy soundtrack. It’s also thrillingly infused with kaleidoscopic imagery that unexpectedly brings to mind the work of Gregg Araki. (In addition to the New Queer Cinema icon, Syroechkovskaya has also cited Harmony Korine and the artwork of David LaChapelle as touchstones.) Through the drinking and snorting, injecting and cutting, remained an eternal love that would tear them apart. (Naturally, Joy Division also figures prominently in their lives, as evidenced by the cat they decided to name Ian.) This feature-length resurrection also persists, the sweetest of requiems for a futureless generation. A few days before How to Save a Dead Friend’s DOC NYC and IDFA debuts, Filmmaker reached out to the award-winning filmmaker, visual artist and oppositional voice in exile, who fled her homeland in March as the Russian hammer came down.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“This Myth Has Plagued the World for Centuries”: Maxim Pozdorovkin on His DOC NYC Closing Night Film The Conspiracy

From robot-inflicted deaths (2018’s The Truth About Killer Robots) to the rise of Donald Trump through Russian state-sponsored media (2018’s Our New President), Maxim Pozdorovkin recently has taken some unconventional routes down the darkest of rabbit holes. So perhaps it’s no surprise that the Russian-American filmmaker’s latest, The Conspiracy, closing this year’s DOC NYC, is both artistically inventive (featuring evocative animation seamlessly wed with archival imagery) and downright chilling. With a powerful score and big names such as Liev Schreiber (Trotsky) and Jason Alexander (Max Warburg) added to the mix, Pozdorovkin weaves together the interwar stories of three prominent Jewish families: the Warburg bankers headed by Max in Germany; the artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus in France; and Lev Davidovich Bronstein, a Russian Marxist revolutionary better known to the world as Leon Trotsky. The Conspiracy makes the case that in times of great upheaval, scapegoating acts like the strongest of opioids — a nonsensical balm that nevertheless can expeditiously soothe a nation’s soul. Prior to the film’s DOC NYC debut on November 17, Filmmaker reached out to Pozdorovkin (also behind 2013’s Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer and 2014’s The Notorious Mr. Bout) to find out more about this unusual history lesson, one humanity has yet to learn.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Zarifa Ghafari, 'In Her Hands'

Tamana Ayazi and Marcel Mettelsiefen’s In Her Hands follows the unlikeliest of protagonists, with a backstory that practically begs for Hollywood to come calling. (Though Hilary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton, co-founders of HiddenLight Productions and the film’s EPs, did answer the call.) While still in her 20s, Zarifa Ghafari became one of Afghanistan’s first female mayors and the youngest to ever hold that job. And she was appointed by the recently deposed President Ashraf Ghani to the leadership role — not in relatively tolerant Kabul, but in Maidan Shahr, in the conservative province of Wardak, where the Taliban have long had widespread support. Nevertheless, 2020’s International Woman of Courage, who would go on to survive three assassination attempts, seemed to be making her mark when the filmmakers started following her inspirational tale that very same year. But then a fateful decision in a faraway corridor of power was made that changed the course of the film — and Afghanistan’s history (yet again). Luckily, Ghafari managed to hold out in Kabul right up until its devastating fall — with the camera, surprisingly, continuing to roll. And fortunately for Documentary, the passionate advocate for women’s rights in Afghanistan, who continues her activism from her new refuge in Germany, found time to serve as our November Doc Star of the Month. In Her Hands releases globally on Netflix on November 16.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“Stories That Need to Be Told”: Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosołowski on Ukrainian Documentary The Hamlet Syndrome

One of the more unusual projects to play this year’s DOC NYC (also concurrently screening at IDFA in the Best of Fests section), Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosołowski’s The Hamlet Syndrome follows five young men and women as they develop an experimental stage piece based on Shakespeare’s tragedy — as well as their own. The quintet questioning “to be or not to be” are all Ukrainians who have been engaged, to varying degrees, in the war Russia launched back in 2014. (This theater-as-therapy session even predated Putin’s full-scale invasion by several months.) Soldiers Slavik and Katya, along with paramedic Roman, all saw direct conflict. Meanwhile, Rodion, a stylist from Donbas, and Oxana, who’s conflicted about her acting opportunities abroad, bear their own individual psychological scars. Indeed, the latter two also seem to be battling personal wars internally. Having fled his homophobic hometown, Rodion now finds himself increasingly fed up with cosmopolitan liberals, who collectively celebrate the queer community as heroes. “Make this a country where we don’t have to be heroes!” he rages in one powerful monologue. Likewise, Oxana seems resentful of skin-deep groupthink, suffocated by the nationalism that war inevitably inspires. “There is no freedom, only responsibility,” she laments. Whose definition of freedom are these patriotic players actually fighting for? To learn all about shooting an existential drama in the middle of a hot war, Filmmaker reached out to the Polish directing duo (2017’s The Prince and the Dybbuk, 2014’s Domino Effect) — one of whom was selected for the Creative Culture Artist-in-Residence at the Jacob Burns Film Center — just prior to their film’s November 12 DOC NYC (and IDFA) debut.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Each Second Meant the Difference Between Life or Death”: Rory Kennedy on The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari

Forget social and political issues — in documentaries, 2022 is shaping up to be the year of the volcano. There was Sara Dosa’s exquisite Fire of Love (which I fell in love with back at CPH:DOX in March, also screening at DOC NYC), in which a pair of lovestruck vulcanologists are quite literally consumed by their passion. Now we have not one, but two volcano-centric films debuting at this year’s DOC NYC. While I’ve not seen Herzog’s (pre-festival premiering) The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft, its title naming Dosa’s aforementioned protagonists, I’m guessing it’s likely the polar opposite of Rory Kennedy’s latest, The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari. Though the volcano triumphs in the end of both films, Kennedy eschews the scientific angle (no vulcanologists were harmed in the making of the film — because they aren’t even in the film) in favor of the film’s humanitarian core. Comprised of footage from survivors (and Nat Geo cameras) alongside interviews with those who were there (with the emotional and/or physical scars to prove it), The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari is a nail-biting, blow-by-blow, firsthand account of the titular 2019 eruption off the coast of New Zealand. While “White Island” was known to spew its toxic contents every few years or so in the middle of the night, this time the blast occurred during business hours, so to speak, while the area was filled with sightseeing tourists innocently snapping pics of the stunning crater and its surroundings. Fortunately for Filmmaker, the force behind the film — and other docs delving into public tragedies (2022’s Downfall: The Case Against Boeing, 2014’s Last Days in Vietnam, 2007’s Ghosts of Abu Ghraib) — was gracious enough to take time from her busy schedule to answer a few questions about The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari, including how a documentarian with the Kennedy name connects to characters grappling with a personal nightmare in the glare of the media spotlight. The Volcano: Rescue from Whakaari debuts at DOC NYC on November 11 with a Netflix release to follow on December 16.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Film Is Full of Ghosts”: Diana Bustamante on Her DOC NYC-debuting Our Movie (Nuestra película)

Diana Bustamante’s Our Movie (Nuestra película) feels like both a departure and a homecoming for the Latin American producer credited on numerous Cannes winners, most recently Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Jury Prize-awarded (and Tilda Swinton-starring) Memoria. Comprised entirely of news footage from the Medellín-born Bustamante’s childhood — who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s when kidnappings, political assassinations and blood-soaked streets were as common as choir practice — the “essay documentary” is, as the producer/director puts it, “a collage of images, repetitions and memories, built through the intervention of the Colombian news archive.” And what a visceral collage it is - from closeups of bullet holes to a zoom in on a chic high heel (never to be worn again). Perhaps the filmmaker is trying to divine something from the detritus of her past? Indeed, left with more questions than answers lingering long after the credits have rolled, Filmmaker reached out to the busy multi-hyphenate (who also somehow found time to serve as Artistic Director of the Cartagena International Film Festival from 2014-2018) a few days before her film’s November 11 DOC NYC debut. (The following interview was translated from Spanish to English by Samuel Didonato at Cinema Tropical.)

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

What to See at the 13th annual DOC NYC

Wondering what to catch at "America's largest documentary festival" (November 9-27)? My half-dozen-plus suggestions - along with some equally stellar recommendations from my keen-eyed colleagues - can be found at both Filmmaker magazine and Hammer to Nail this year. So doc on!

The 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival Presents Wonder Women: Producers (the Christine Vachon Edition)

Moderated by Darrien Gipson, Executive Director of SAGindie, this year’s Wonder Women: Producers discussion at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival was a must-catch, mostly for two glaringly obvious reasons, with the first being the wide diversity of the participants. Alongside white Brits Alison Owen (Elizabeth, Saving Mr. Banks, perennial panelist and SCAD Savannah Film Festival Advisory Board member) and manager-producer Laura Berwick (Belfast, All is True, and Sir Kenneth’s longtime rep), there was the English-Jamaican writer-actress-producer Nicôle Lecky (Mood, The Moor Girl), and American actress and producer Jurnee Smollett (Lovecraft Country, Birds of Prey). Then there was the second reason — the presence of “grande dame” of indie film (per Gipson), Christine Vachon (Far From Heaven, Carol), who has been running her female-led Killer Films since the mid-’90s. In other words, Vachon had more than a panel’s worth of wisdom to dispense.

To learn more visit Filmmaker magazine.

From Indie To Glitz: Panel Picks For The 25th SCAD Savannah Film Festival

One of my producer friends has a saying: The world needs another film festival like it needs another strip mall. It’s a pretty spot-on nod to the fact that far too many organizations have a habit of programming from the same (Sundance/Tribeca/Toronto, et al.-inspired) playbook. If you’ve been to one local fest you’ve been to them all. Unless you’ve been to the SCAD Savannah Film Festival. For the largest university-run film festival in the US has a number of distinctive things going for it, most notably its above-all commitment to the next generation of filmmakers. While the Savannah College of Art and Design never shies away from bringing in the Hollywood glitz – Ron Howard is this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Directing recipient – it balances that glam with so many truly informative panels (and thus networking opportunities) that attending feels almost like being back in school. (That is, a really cool school with a curriculum that includes 22 Gala Screenings, 10 Signature Screenings, and 10 in-competition narrative and doc features, along with a slew of shorts.) And this year’s 25th edition (October 22-29) continues the noble educational tradition – even adding a few new “courses.” Which means I’ll likely be raving about the following handful of panels, along with many more. (While keeping a guilty eye out for the dozen-plus A-listers, of course – especially Opie, Eddie Redmayne and Janelle Monáe.)

To read the rest visit Hammer to Nail.

Doc Stars of the Month: Happy Oliveros, Carlos O. González and Victor Baró, The Last Out

Oscar-nominated filmmaker Sami Khan (St. Louis Superman) and immersive producer-sound artist-director Michael Gassert’s POV-premiering (October 3, and streaming on PBS.org through November 16) documentary The Last Out “explores the shadowy nexus of pro sports and the migrant trail,” according to its accurate, yet humbly incomplete, synopsis. This riveting, multiyear portrait of collective self-sacrifice, which follows a trio of Cuban athletes who leave their home island to pursue the American (baseball) dream, is much more than the sum of any catchy logline. Above all, it’s a heartfelt look at three passionate young men — all from stable, loving, two-parent families — who would much prefer to stay put. But due to geopolitics and pro-sports hegemony when it comes to “America’s Pastime,” they are forced to swing at only the greyest of legal options. Indeed, every year hundreds of talented, US-blockaded aspirants like Happy Oliveros, Carlos O. González, and Victor Baró risk life and limb and exile to venture to Central America, lured by the (too often fool’s) gold of MLB contracts. If they manage to make it safely to Costa Rica, they can then hunker down in a no-frills camp set up by a slickster named Gus Dominguez, a Cuban-American sports agent and onetime federal convict who did time for player-smuggling over a decade ago (and perhaps even more astonishingly, agreed to participate in the film). And then they train, train some more, and hopefully audition for scouts. Eventually, they either make it to major-league heaven or, more likely and tragically, they are booted out to travel back home (or to the US-Mexico border) through hell. So, to learn all about being trailed by a camera on this harrowing path to the American dream, Documentary reached out to the intrepid threesome, who graciously agreed to serve as our October Doc Stars of the Month. Thanks to Samuel Didonato at Cinema Tropical for providing the translation during the conversation.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

Bizarre love triangle: Fire of Love

NATURE / The extraordinary love story of volcanologist couple Katia and Maurice Krafft, who died as explosively as they lived. Sara Dosa has a knack for capturing the interplay between humankind and the natural world, distilling it to its inseparable essence. Her 2014 feature debut, The Last Season, trailed two mushroom-hunting war vets deep into the Oregon woods; while 2019’s The Seer and the Unseen followed an Icelandic «seer» who acts as a liaison between the country’s elves, trolls and «hidden people» and us mere mortals, And now with this year’s exquisitely-crafted, Sundance-winning Fire of Love, the Indie Spirit Award-nominated director (and Peabody award-winning producer) allows us to get even more up close and personal: to witness members of our species literally – and willingly and beautifully – embrace consummation by force majeure.

To read the rest of my essay visit Modern Times Review.

Doc Star of the Month: Reid Davenport, 'I Didn't See You There'

Winner of the Directing Award for US Documentary at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Reid Davenport’s debut feature, I Didn’t See You There, is, according to the Stanford-trained filmmaker, a doc “about disability from an overtly political perspective”— i.e., the kind of cinematic project the TED fellow and one of DOC NYC’s 2020 “40 Filmmakers Under 40” has long been pursuing with his accolade-laden shorts (A Cerebral Game; Wheelchair Diaries: One Step Up; Ramped up, et al). And it’s equally an art film; informed by the personally lensed work of visionaries ranging from Chantal Ackerman to Kirsten Johnson to RaMell Ross, I Didn’t See You There is, as the director-DP also puts it, “an invitation to see through my eyes.” In other words, an offer any passionate cinephile would be unlikely to refuse. Indeed, Davenport is even willing to serve as our narrating escort on this mesmerizing, at times magical realist, journey, whisking and wheeling us via his camera-mounted wheelchair from today’s fast-gentrifying Oakland—where one day, in rather Lynchian fashion, a circus tent inexplicably pops up outside the filmmaker’s apartment—to sleepy Bethel, Connecticut (the shared hometown of Davenport and 19th-century impresario/freak-show progenitor P.T. Barnum), tracing and subtly interweaving personal and political history along the way. It’s also a film in which the director serves as his own protagonist, and thus presents the perfect excuse for Documentary to feature the filmmaker as our September Doc Star of the Month. I Didn’t See You There premieres theatrically on September 30 at the just-opened, New York City-based Firehouse Cinema, run by DCTV, followed by a broadcast premiere on January 16 on POV.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“My Social Location as a Member of a Fraternity Makes My Voice a Credible One”: Byron Hurt on His PBS Independent Lens Doc Hazing

As someone who never understood (okay, downright loathed) the conformist culture of so-called Greek-letter organizations, I didn’t bother to catch Byron Hurt’s (Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Soul Food Junkies) latest doc Hazing when it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival back in the spring. But fortunately, the film — which takes a deep historical, as well as personal, dive into what Wikipedia defines as “any activity expected of someone in joining or participating in a group that humiliates, degrades, abuses, or endangers them regardless of a person’s willingness to participate” — will now be launching the new season of PBS’s Independent Lens, which gave me a welcomed second chance to correct some of my own very wrongly preconceived notions. A certain victim-blaming narrative inevitably pops up every time a frat or sorority pledge is irreparably harmed, or too often dies, at the hands of “brothers” and “sisters” supposedly tasked to look out for them. Refreshingly, the director himself is brave enough to likewise challenge his own preconceived notions, taking a holistic approach that stretches across racial lines to ask probing questions of victims’ families, whistleblowing survivors, academics and even still-proud secret society members. As both a onetime pledge and subsequent tormentor himself, Hurt is able to confront his own complicity in the dangerous silence, and in the process expose the root of the insidious ritual, which can be summed up in one painful word: shame. In order to learn all about this emotionally difficult cinematic journey, Filmmaker reached out to the award-winning, self-described “documentary filmmaker, writer, and anti-sexist activist” a week prior to the doc’s PBS debut. Hazing opens the newest season of Independent Lens on Monday, September 12 at 10 p.m. ET. The film will also be available to stream thereafter on the PBS Video app.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“I Believe in a Holistic Approach to World Building”: Sophie Jarvis on her TIFF-Debuting Psychological Drama Until Branches Bend

Veteran production designer Sophie Jarvis’s assured feature debut Until Branches Bend is one smartly executed, unexpected gem. Premiering in the Discovery section of this year’s TIFF, the psychological drama (really a contemporary horror film) follows a cannery worker named Robin (2016 TIFF Rising Star Grace Glowicki) whose life is upended after discovering a creepy bug in a peach while (conveniently) alone at break time. Unable to get her boss to take the very real threat of a catastrophic invasion seriously — and perhaps risk a factory shutdown — she decides to go public with her unappetizing finding, which entails sounding the alarm to a community that relies exclusively on said factory for its financial lifeblood, and is similarly inclined to dismiss a woman like Robin. That is to say, a strong-willed Cassandra who has to crusade just to be heard as well as a blue collar worker forced to jump through hoop after condescending hoop just to access a basic right like abortion — something Robin now desperately needs after having an affair with a (married) boss prone to blowing off a woman’s “hysterical” concerns. A few weeks prior to Until Branches Bend’s September 10 (at TIFF Bell Lightbox) world premiere Filmmaker reached out to the Canadian designer-director to learn all about cinematically weaving together personal and environmental havoc (while a pandemic and raging wildfires loomed like an omen offscreen).

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“We Were Filming at a Time When Putin Was Arresting Opposition”: Sarah McCarthy on Her Telluride-Premiering Doc Short Anastasia

Sarah McCarthy is no stranger to navigating the myriad challenges posed by authoritarian states. Indeed, the Australian doc-maker has shot in precarious political places throughout the world, from the Philippines, to Saudi Arabia to Russia — where she’s returned time and time again. Nor is she a stranger to the Toronto International Film Festival, where following on the heels of feature-length works (The Sound of Mumbai, The Dark Matter of Love) she now debuts her latest short Anastasia; and the innocuous title, much like the film’s titular character, belies one powerful punch. Anastasia Shevchenko is a Russian civil rights advocate who’s been arrested and placed under house arrest — which is, unfortunately, not an anomaly under the Putin regime. Smartly, McCarthy is less concerned with the “crimes” Shevchenko committed than with the individual who’s chosen to sacrifice herself — and hence her family — to the greater democratic cause. It’s a portrait not of an outspoken firebrand, though Shevchenko is certainly that, but of a single mother who wants nothing more than to see her children grow up in a free society. Of course, whether the personal price paid by those she’s ostensibly fighting for is worth that heavy toll is also the crux of every activist’s dilemma. A few weeks prior to the film’s TIFF Short Cuts debut on September 9 (and the week before its Telluride world premiere), Filmmaker caught up with the intrepid globetrotting director — who the UK’s Radio Times recently named as one of its “30 Most Powerful Women in Film.”

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“Directing When You Are an Editor Feels Like Cheating”: Cinque Northern on His Telluride Doc Short Angola Do You Hear Us?

Having already made the prestige fest rounds to great acclaim this year — from Tribeca to the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage outdoor film series just this summer — Cinque Northern’s Angola Do You Hear Us? is now a must-catch at Telluride. The documentary short follows the incomparable actor and playwright Liza Jessie Peterson on her artistic and spiritual mission to bring her one-woman show The Peculiar Patriot to none other than the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. The film also explores all the baggage, bureaucracy and ultimate blocking that was met with a work centered on racial injustice (that deftly connects the capitalistic dots between slavery and the incarceration industrial complex) at a plantation-turned-prison. So to learn all about this outside the box project (which even includes some evocative animation) Filmmaker reached out to the short’s director/editor — and 25 New Faces alum — the week before the film’s Telluride launch.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Human MOOP: Matter Out of Place

Nikolaus Geyrhalter has described his static-camera, nearly architecturally-composed, observational docs as “archival material, which people will dig out in 50 or 100 years.” Which makes perfect sense since the Austrian auteur is not really a creator of “slow” cinema – an abundance of movement forever present within his frame – so much as works not bound by the manmade concept of time. And similar to many of our (last century’s) modern artists he prefers to let inanimate objects – which in turn become curious characters our eye is drawn to follow – take the narrative lead. Now with his latest Matter Out of Place, which premiered at the Locarno Film Festival (and took the “green leopard” environmental prize), Geyrhalter has made what I’m guessing will be this year’s most riveting film about garbage. Though the title could just as easily apply to humankind as well.

To read the rest of my review visit Global Comment.

“Without the Consent of our Child Protagonists We Would Not Have Made the Film”: Lidia Duda on her Locarno-Premiering Doc Fledglings

Premiering at this year’s Locarno Film Festival, Lidia Duda’s Fledglings is an entrancing look at a trio of seven year olds who bravely travel far from home to board at a school for the visually impaired. Forced to rely only on themselves, their teachers — and most importantly one another — Zosia, Oskar and Kinga spend their days mastering everything from handrails to utensils, to spelling words and playing the piano. Not to mention navigating often overwhelming emotions. (At least for the creative Zosia and sensitive Oskar, whose developmental disabilities can sometimes stress the besties out. Kinga, on the other hand, is one stoic little chick.) And equally remarkable is the unseen force behind the lens who, through respectful closeups and evocative black and white imagery, attempts to meet her young protagonists on their own terms, and, in the process, allow us all to experience a new way of seeing. Filmmaker reached out to the multi-award-winning Polish director the day before her film’s international debut in the Semaine De La Critique section of the fest.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“The Very First Cut Lasted About 25 Hours”: María Álvarez on Her Proust Documentary, Le temps perdu

María Álvarez’s 2020 doc Le temps perdu (premiering theatrically on these shores at NYC’s Film Forum August 12th) is the second film in an exquisite trilogy, beginning with 2017’s Las cinéphilas and ending just last year with the IDFA debut of Las cercanas. All three docs are poetic meditations on the intersection of art, aging and memory, similarly focused on vibrant geriatric characters whose connections to cinema, literature and music (in ascending part order) are as profound as life itself. In the case of Le temps perdu reading becomes, in the apt description of one enthusiastic gent, “a creative act” — and an epic one at that. For two decades a band of book-loving — specifically one book, In Search of Lost Time — retirees have met up in a Buenos Aires bistro to read aloud from Marcel Proust’s 3,000-page, seven-volume masterwork. In their meetings they dissect, decipher (Is art an “extension” of life, dependent on it, or can it transcend it?) and find meaning within evocative similes, such as to control the body is like “trying to talk to an octopus.” The latter is a sentiment understood every bit as viscerally by a 21st-century elderly lady recovering from a hip replacement as it did for its turn-of-the-20th-century gay male author. A devoted member of the greying literati describes the sudden sensation of being in Paris while simply waiting to cross the street, noting how wonderful it is to “travel for free.” A man ponders Proust’s scrapping of satisfaction in favor of the “extinction of desire”; while a female reader embraces the author’s “self substitution” as her own experience of changing over the years. And throughout decades of effusive discussion and respectful quarreling at least one consensus comes to the fore: Memories multiply a person after they’re long gone. Which could perhaps explain our own modern entrancement with the moving image as well. So to learn all about the multi-year journey from long book to big screen Filmmaker reached out to the acclaimed Argentinean director the week prior to her doc’s US debut tomorrow at New York’s Film Forum.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

No fail-safe: Hogir Hirori’s “Sabaya”

Like many film journalists, not to mention jury members, who caught Hogir Hirori’s now discredited Sabaya at this year’s Sundance I was riveted, calling it (in the intro to my interview with Hirori) a “harrowing tale of heroism from a filmmaker all too familiar with the wartime struggles of those he documents.” Of course, thanks to the New York Times – and even more so to the dogged reporters at Sweden’s Kvartal – we now know that many of the key scenes in the Swedish-Kurdish director’s doc, which focuses on the ISIS sex slave-saving men and (anonymous) women of the Yazidi Home Center, were staged. Which as a non doc purist honestly bothers me less than the fact that Hirori, when confronted by an inquiring press, fictionalized his own account of obtaining said footage. And even more troubling, seems not to have obtained true consent from all his characters – and likewise not come clean about that terrible breach of trust either. Yet as a film critic with zero background in investigative journalism, I also personally don’t feel I “should have known better.”

To read the rest of my non mea culpa visit Global Comment.

Artistic history: The Harun Farocki Institute celebrates American Artist-in-Residence Cathy Lee Crane

“What is a poetic cinema? That’s a question I’ve been thinking about, a question yet to be answered. It can’t just be that it’s not linear. It has to propose a different kind of language and a different kind of thought. And as a result, logic,” offered the American artist and educator Cathy Lee Crane when I recently caught up with her from several time zones away to learn what she’s been up to since we last spoke in 2018 about The Manhattan Front (her debut narrative feature inspired by a bizarre true tale involving a WWI German saboteur, ACLU founding member Elisabeth Gurley Flynn, and the Industrial Workers of the World). The self-proclaimed “decidedly nonlinear filmmaker” also happens to be a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow whose over two decades of work, much of which melds archival footage with staged material, was presented back in 2015 as part of the American Original Now series at the National Gallery of Art. And the multimedia vet’s award-winning films (including the intriguingly titled “experimental biographies” Pasolini’s Last Words and Unoccupied Zone: The Impossible Life of Simone Weil) have likewise played far and wide overseas; from the BFI to the Viennale, to the Festival du Nouveau Cinema and the Cinematheque Francais, and the Arsenal Cinema in Berlin. Which is where Crane is now ensconced, having become the latest recipient of the (Goethe-Institut sponsored) Harun Farocki Residency.

To read part two of my interview with the philosophical multihyphenate visit Global Comment.

Why trans bodies matter (hint: It’s the Patriarchy, Stupid)

In the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe, leaving reproductive rights to be strangled by the groping hands of overwhelmingly male Republican state legislatures across the US, progressive activists demanded action. And the Democrat-controlled federal government, having dropped the ball on abortion and facing tough midterm elections this fall, swiftly responded with two bills: one which codified the right to same-sex (and interracial – an added fuck you/“dare you to overrule that” touch to Justice Thomas) marriage, the other the right to contraception. The former quickly passed the House – including with support from members of the party that killed Roe – while the latter seems DOA in the Senate. Which, perhaps unsurprisingly, led the professional political pundits to first express “shock” at both outcomes, and then to wildly hypothesize. How had an IUD become more controversial than gay marriage? And was this actually a silver-lined sign of progress? (Of course not.)

So to read the rest of my essay on how the political punditry got it so wrong visit Global Comment.

“The Story of the Borderlands Is Not Singular”: Cathy Lee Crane on Drawing the Line

Filmmaker last interviewed veteran multimedia artist Cathy Lee Crane about her first feature-length narrative film The Manhattan Front, which combined staged performances and archival footage from the National Archives in DC to present the strange but true entanglement of a WWI German saboteur with the progressive labor movement of activist Elisabeth Gurley Flynn. While Crane’s latest selection of works likewise resurrects buried US history, they tread territory even further back in time, all the way down to the border, and are currently being shown a continent away. Throughout the month of July, the Harun Farocki Institute in Berlin will be showcasing several projects from their second American artist-in-residence (Kevin B. Lee was the inaugural invitee), including Crane’s multi-platform hybrid series Drawing the Line, a 14-channel work in progress that travels from El Paso to the Pacific Ocean to grapple with what the 19th century US and Mexico Border Survey Commission has wrought. To learn all about this sprawling mosaic that combines “staging, interviews, observational documentary, sonic records, and the archive in collaboration with those living in the shadow of the Commission’s arbitrary line” — as well as the feature-length doc Crossing Columbus (2020) and the short film Terrestrial Sea (2022) — Filmmaker reached out once again to the globetrotting (2013) Guggenheim Fellow.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Margaret Byrne, ‘Any Given Day’

Margaret Byrne’s Any Given Day is a half-decade-long ride on the roller coaster that those living with a mental illness face — on “any given day” — through the stories of four distinctly riveting individuals, three of whom the director met while investigating the treatment of detainees at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, which in 2014 had the dubious distinction of being the largest single-site mental health facility in the country. And these individuals are participants in the city’s diversionary mental health court probation program. (Which, unfortunately, is itself problematic, since a guilty plea is often the price of admission.) There’s Angela, a dedicated preschool teacher and single mother of four fighting to regain custody of her youngest. Also Daniel, who studied fashion before his dream of being a shoe designer got upended by his illness. And Dimitar, an author (State of Schizophrenia) and anthropologist who emigrated from Bulgaria as a boy and worked full-time to put himself through college. And rounding out the quartet is Margaret Byrne herself, a single mother and the founder-director of an all-female film collective called Beti Films — whose lifetime battle with depression nearly derailed her latest doc. Any Given Day premieres July 7 as part of World Channel’s America ReFramed series. In honor of BIPOC Mental Health Month, Documentary reached out to the Emmy Award-nominated filmmaker-protagonist, who agreed to put herself in the spotlight and serve as our July Doc Star of the Month — and to let us in on the one project that forced her “to challenge the stereotype that a person with a mental illness is an unreliable narrator."

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

Safe sex scenes: Body Parts

SEX: Exploring the female body in Hollywood by tracing the making of sex scenes, the toll it takes on those involved, and what it means for women in the real world. For most of its history, Hollywood has been globally gaslighting the world, exporting the lie that the male gaze is somehow always benign or «neutral,» when of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Fortunately, we now have Kristy Guevara-Flanagan’s (Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines) eye-opening Body Parts, which world-premiered in the Spotlight Documentary section of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, to unpack both how we got to this patriarchal cinematic state and how those in the camera’s line of sight are now shooting back. Drawing from a sweeping range of classic film clips and knowledgeable voices on the subject of simulated sex onscreen – from film scholars to intimacy coordinators to Jane Fonda – the doc is, sadly, proof positive that it didn’t have to be this way; the «inevitably» of female objectification in the movies actually the result of a highly systematic manmade plan.

To read the rest of my essay visit Modern Times Review.

Subjective truth: Subject

DOCS: Some of the biggest non-fiction films of the past years go under the microscope, investigating the ethics of documenting trauma. As a film journo who’s spent the past half-decade interviewing the characters (or protagonists – as I’ve had a prickly aversion to the word «subject» since long before its colonialist connotation became generally accepted) in front of the nonfiction lens for my «Doc Star of the Month» column at Documentary magazine, Jennifer Tiexiera, and Camilla Hall’s Subject was a no-brainer to catch. And lucky for me, the tongue-in-cheek-titled film, world-premiering in the Documentary Competition at the 2022 Tribeca Festival (June 8-19), turned out to be one of those rare selections that actually lives up to its «essential viewing» synopsis hype. Tiexiera and Hall, who met at Tribeca Festival 2017 (with the premieres of A Suitable Girl and Copwatch, respectively), have now joined forces to highlight the highs and lows of the real-life, flesh-and-blood folks who’ve put their mental, physical, and emotional health on the line in five of the genre’s highest-profile (sometimes controversial) docs: The Staircase, Hoop Dreams, The Wolfpack, Capturing the Friedmans, and The Square; while also interviewing a wide array of insightful academics, experts and, most notably, fellow documentary directors (though, in the smartest of twists, none behind the aforementioned quintet).

To read my entire essay visit Modern Times Review.

“I Can’t Afford to Let Cliches Live in the Cinema I Make”: Leilah Weinraub on Shakedown

Leilah Weinraub’s 2018 Shakedown, which began playing Metrograph on June 17th (and has been held over through June 30th due to high demand), has been touted by Variety as the “the first-ever non-adult film” to be picked up by Pornhub. Yet it could also be called the sex site’s first-ever Berlinale-premiering and Tate/ICA/MoMA PS1/Whitney Biennial-screened acquisition. And likely the smut streamer’s first-ever labor of love release as well. Indeed, Shakedown is a film that defies any easy categorization. Ostensibly a longform cinematic exploration (crafted over 15 years starting in 2002) of the titular, mid-city, Los Angeles, Black lesbian strip club, the doc is likewise a study in the invention of identity, family and community — especially for those marginalized by both blood relatives and society. It’s also a heck of a risk-taking endeavor: Neither a feminist film nor an easily digestible depiction of Black women for that matter, the true (and unapologetically self-proclaimed) stars of the doc are just as comfortable expressing sexual fluidity (the legendary dancer Egypt reminisces about the time before she was gay) as they are popping a bare booty for the lens.

So to read my interview with the intersectional industry vet behind the lens - a NYC-based native of LA whose unconventional career has taken her from being mentored by Tony Kaye, to working with Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, to serving as CEO of the street-wear fashion brand Hood By Air - visit Filmmaker magazine.

True Crime Nuance: HBO’s “Mind Over Murder”

On its surface, Mind Over Murder – the titillatingly titled six-part doc series that debuted June 20 on HBO – might seem merely the latest addition to a bloated, true-crime juggernaut. And yet in the critically acclaimed hands of Nanfu Wang (In the Same Breath, One Child Nation, Hooligan Sparrow) the Vox Media Studios-produced project becomes infused with an element rarely seen in our current corporate documentary age: nuance. Indeed, this in-depth exploration of a notorious case in which six men and women – all poor and white with two struggling with severe mental issues – were convicted (and subsequently exonerated) for the 1985 murder of Helen Wilson, a grandmother and beloved member of the Beatrice, Nebraska community, contains neither heroes nor villains. Just a lot of sad and tragically imperfect human beings. So what led five of the “Beatrice Six” to confess to a crime in which not a shred of DNA evidence would ever be found to connect them? And why to this day is both the small town and Wilson’s family fiercely divided over their actual innocence? And why on earth would a filmmaker born and raised in China set out for the US heartland to try to understand the motives behind this horrific crime, its unorthodox investigation, and the decades-spanning trials and exonerations (followed by two civil suits)? Not to mention the making of the local playhouse’s production based entirely on court transcripts.

To find out read my essay at Global Comment.

Doc Star of the Month: Marshall Ngwa aka BeBe Zahara Benet, 'Being BeBe'

World-premiering at the 2021 Tribeca Festival, Emily Branham’s Being BeBe is a revealing walk (uh, sashay) down memory lane with the titular BeBe Zahara Benet, the very first winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, back in 2009. Well, not exactly. Rather, BeBe’s equally charismatic conjurer — a Minnesota transplant from Cameroon named Marshall Ngwa — actually takes the lead in guiding us through 15 vérité-captured years of the artist’s creatively fulfilling/financially devastating (though fortunately, family-supportive) life — from her humble amateur drag beginnings in Minneapolis in 2006 (when Branham, whose sister was a backup dancer for the performer, began filming) to the heights of reality-show fame, and then back down to the brutal reality of the murder of George Floyd and a COVID lockdown-stalled career. Until naturally, this unrelenting champion of “Queer Black Excellence” ultimately rises, phoenix-style, in fabulous heels once again. All of which makes Ngwa/Benet the quintessential fit for Documentary’s June Pride Doc Star of the Month. Being BeBe premieres June 21 on Fuse (and OUTtv in Canada).

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.

“I Never Saw This as a ‘True Crime’ Series”: Nanfu Wang on HBO Docuseries Mind Over Murder

One of the more surprising revelations in the provocatively titled six-part docuseries Mind Over Murder has nothing to do with the sad tale presented onscreen of the “Beatrice Six,” as the three men and three women convicted (and ultimately absolved) of killing a beloved grandma in Beatrice, Nebraska back in 1985 came to be known. Instead, the surprise comes when the end credits disclose the story is being revisited by none other than critically-acclaimed director Nanfu Wang (In the Same Breath, One Child Nation), not exactly a usual suspect for the sensationalist true crime genre. Then again, Wang doesn’t seem much interested in adhering to any tabloidesque playbook, tossing cinematic tropes of both heroes and villains straight off the screen, a choice that ingeniously swings Mind Over Murder in a far more consequential — and ultimately existential - direction. Unlike the current crop of sleuthing journos bent on becoming the next Errol Morris, Wang is not looking to prove or disprove anything. The case has already been exhaustively laid out in numerous, decades-spanning trials and investigations (from which she deftly deploys footage), resulting in a 2009 DNA acquittal for every single member of the Beatrice Six. Rather, Wang’s come to the small-town scene of the crime to conduct contemporary, on-the-ground interviews, patiently probe the minds of all the living players and document the amateur players in a local theater production as they develop, wholly from courtroom transcripts, what they hope will be a source of truth and reconciliation. The real mystery that Wang has set out to solve is how both a community and a victim’s family can be split on the question of a person’s innocence even in the face of solid exonerating evidence — and whether it’s ever possible to dislodge a false narrative once it’s become insidiously ingrained in an individual’s identity. Denial, after all, is a form of self-preservation, whether you’re a grieving relative desperate for closure, an (in-over-your-head) investigator desperate to provide it for that loved one or a wrongly accused individual prone to manipulation by a desperately self-preserving authority figure. To try to get at some answers, Filmmaker turned to the empathetic, China-born-and-raised documentarian herself (who happens to know a thing or two about believing in false narratives propagated by self-preserving authority figures). Episodes of Mind Over Murder began dropping on HBO June 20.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“I Heard Shots Behind Me, Turned Back and Saw Killers Approaching”: Lesya Kalynska on Tribeca Premiere A Rising Fury

In Ukraine, Russian disinformation has finally met its lie-dismantling match in the information warfare sphere — which, ironically, within the larger landscape of our head-spinning, 24-hour news cycle, only serves to muddy the waters of “truth” even further. Fortunately, the besieged nation has a thriving documentary scene with a habit of taking the patient and longterm vérité approach. Out of that tradition comes Lesya Kalynska and Ruslan Batytskyi’s feature debut A Rising Fury, world-premiering at Tribeca Festival, the culmination of an often fraught, messily complicated eight-year filmmaking journey. This breathtakingly cinematic explainer of current events follows the young patriotic Pavlo, a soldier from the Donbas region where the war began in 2014, and activist volunteer Svitlana, a single mother who the infantryman met and fell in love with on the frontlines of the Maidan Uprising. Over the course of nearly a decade the pair’s hopes and passionate idealism is tested on the battleground of Russia’s insidious hybrid warfare, changing the couple and their beloved country forever — as it has the Ukrainian filmmakers behind the lens. A few days prior to the Tribeca launch on June 10, Filmmaker caught up with NYC-based, Kyiv native Kalynska (who heartbreakingly had to include a dedication in the film to her mom after she passed away post-evacuation from Bucha); while Batytskyi was understandably unreachable, too busy filming with the troops back in Ukraine.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“This is a Transgressive Force that Springs from the Imagination”: Rodrigo Reyes on his Tribeca-Premiering Doc Sansón and Me

The latest from “25 New Faces” alum Rodrigo Reyes, who we last spoke with for 2020’s Tribeca-selected 499, might also be his most personal and potentially fraught. The journey to Sansón and Me began a decade ago, when the Mexican-American filmmaker’s day job as a Spanish court interpreter in rural California took a turn for the tragically unexpected. Sansón Noe Andrade was a “quiet and super-polite” 19-year-old who was behind the wheel when his (even younger) brother-in-law decided to open fire on a rival from the passenger side of Sansón’s car. As a result, both teens were charged with murder. And Sansón, perhaps unaware that the US criminal justice system runs on plea deals, decided to take his chances at trial — a decision, perhaps inevitably, that led to his being found guilty and sentenced to life without parole. Cut to Sansón thanking his interpreter with a handshake before being cuffed and whisked away by bailiffs, an image that’s haunted the helpless Reyes ever since. To learn how this chance encounter ultimately led to a sprawling cinematic collaboration between Reyes, Sansón, and the incarcerated man’s struggling family members still down in small town Mexico — as well as tricky ethical landmines — Filmmaker reached out to the director just prior to the doc’s June 12 world premiere in the Viewpoints section of this year’s Tribeca Festival.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“We Decided To Rewrite All of Our Consent Releases So That They Were More Favorable to Participants”: Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall on their Tribeca-premiering doc Subject

"Catnip for the cinephile” boasts the program synopsis for Jennifer Tiexiera and Camilla Hall’s Subject, which makes its world debut on June 11 in the Documentary Competition at this year’s Tribeca Festival. It’s a pretty spot-on claim for a doc that probes the post-screen afterlives and reflective minds of some of nonfiction cinema’s most recognizable stars. By juxtaposing contemporary interviews with characters from Capturing the Friedmans, Hoop Dreams, The Staircase, The Wolfpack, and The Square as well as interviews with acclaimed documentary directors (though smartly, none behind any of the aforementioned), academics and various experts on non-fiction ethics, a bigger and deeper picture emerges. As does a cascade of troubling questions about documentary storytelling — many of which will likely never be fully resolved. To learn all about documenting the documented, Filmmaker caught up the week prior to Tribeca with co-directors Tiexiera (A Suitable Girl) and Hall (Copwatch), who along with Rita Baghdadi (Sirens) formed the doc production company Lady & Bird just last year in order to give voice to underrepresented stories both at home and abroad.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

“We Knew We Had to be Nude to Participate in this Space of Mutual Trust”: Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan on their Tribeca Festival-debuting doc Naked Gardens

The latest from husband-and-wife team – and 2016 25 New Face alums – Ivete Lucas and Patrick Bresnan (Pahokee), Naked Gardens is a nonsexual skin flick of sorts, a season-long vérité look at the residents of family nudist resort Sunsport Gardens. Tucked away in the Florida Everglades, and run by a hippieish, Gandalf-like owner named Morley, the paradisiacal enclave draws folks from around the country – those opposed to society’s strict clothing mandate, but also just gung-ho for the place’s cheap rent. A virtual melting pot of nonconformity, Sunsport Gardens is likewise a bipartisan haven where a family with kids from conservative Kentucky, a recently widowed lesbian, and an Afro-coiffed free spirit can together live their truest selves away from the world’s harsh judgment. And perhaps even escape from any personal demons. At least until reality sneaks up like sunburn. Fortunately for Filmmaker, the duo behind this beautifully crafted cinematic portrait found time just prior to their Tribeca Festival Documentary Competition premiere (June 10) to give us the scoop over email on everything from guaranteeing uncensored onscreen nudity (a prerequisite for characters to even consent to participate in the doc) to agreeing to shoot in the nude.

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.

Doc Star of the Month: Harry Chuck, 'Chinatown Rising'

For over four decades, 20,000 feet of 16mm-shot film sat untouched in the San Francisco home of lifetime Chinatown resident Reverend Harry Chuck. The footage was supposed to serve as the basis for Chuck’s sweeping graduate thesis, “Chinatown San Francisco: A Community in Transition.” But then life invariably got in the way, and the epic cinematic history of one marginalized community’s generational struggles—‘60s-radicalized youth vs. their “keep your head down” elders raised under the threat of the Chinese Exclusion Act—was never completed. Until now. With the help of son/co-director and producer Josh Chuck (himself a longtime Chinatown-focused filmmaker, fundraiser and youth worker), Harry’s personal and political history is now set to see the public light on May 26 as part of World Channel’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (AAPIHM) programming. The father-son duo’s America ReFramed doc Chinatown Rising features enlightening contemporary interviews with the era’s prominent activists (as well as an elder), juxtaposed with the treasure trove of footage. All insightfully narrated, both onscreen and in VO, by the now-octogenarian, first-time feature filmmaker himself. Documentary is honored that the former Youth Director and later Executive Director of Cameron House (an organization founded “to build strength and resilience through family-centered programs” for San Francisco's Chinese community), co-founder of the Chinatown Coalition for Better Housing, onetime member of both the Public Housing Authority and Juvenile Justice Commission in San Francisco—not to mention one of the first Asian American religious leaders to advocate for marriage equality—found time in his still-active schedule to serve as May’s Doc Star of the Month.

To read my interview visit Documentary magazine.